Albany, NY -- Times Select
I bit the bullet and paid for the NY Times's online premium package, Times Select, this evening. I figre thati if I can shell out $200 to buy new clothes on a whim just so I don't have to wash some of the ones I've already got, I can afford to pay to read Frank Rich every week. If any of you, my three readers, wants a particular premium article, just
e-mail me and I'll send you a copy. I mean, you deserve to read such insights as this one from Paul Krugman: "Consider this: in the United States, unlike any other advanced country, many people fail to receive basic health care because they can't afford it. Lack of health insurance kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and 9/11 combined."
If you're between 22 and 35, you'll probably be pretty psyched to hear about the
upcoming Fraggle Rock movie.
The Apple
iPod Nano's screen is extremely delicate, and I can vouch for that personally.
For all of you men who are into sports but are attached to women who aren't,
here's a piece for you.
Albany, NY -- Alas, Poor Rita...
Good news, relatively speaking...
Rita has been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane.
Off to DC tomorrow -- on Monday, I get to meet with Ira Forman, Executive Director of the
National Jewish Democratic Council and Howard Dean's voice on Jewish issues. I don't care very much for Jewish issues, but heck any connection I can get is a good one, especially at that level.
By the way, I usually check my links to see if they work, but sometimes when I'm in a hurry, I don't. So tell me if there's a bad one!
And man, oh man, tomorrow night is the season premiere of the West Wing. I hope I can get to DC by 8 PM to catch it. If not, it'll have to wait until I get home next weekend. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Don't you wish Matt Santos and Arnie Vinick were really running for President?
New York, NY -- Rita on the Rampage
Hurricane Rita, having broken two levees in New Orleans, is now beginning to wreak havoc in Texas.
The commissioner of the FDA, Lester "The Molester" Crawford resigned today, after his criminally negligent handling of Vioxx.
Albany, NY -- Brick by Brick
Another brick is removed from the wall between church and state.
As the Gulf Coast braces itself from Hurricane Rita, sex offenders may be a problem in hurricane shelters.
Off to New York again tomorrow... I'm already exhausted!
Albany, NY -- Pretty Persuasion
Great... FEMA
rescinds its promise to pay most of the costs of enrolling evacuated students elsewhere. Why am I not surprised? Meanwhile,
it's not looking good for Houston... I am starting to believe some of the talk of global warming intensifying hurricanes!
Down in NYC yesterday, I saw the movie
Pretty Persuasion. I hadn't heard of it before, and boy, was it twisted! Pretty dark and funny, but about 45 minutes too long, though. James Woods, Selma Blair (mmm...) and the dude who plays Peter in Office Space were in it.
Albany, NY -- Google Wireless?
Another mandatory hurricane evaluation, this one much earlier. Our friend John Kocurek could be in its path, and we wish him the best. Hopefully, if it's needed, FEMA will do a much better job making sure supplies get to where they're needed than they did immediately after Katrina.
Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, says that he'll be voting against John Roberts's confirmation as Chief Justice, but that he's not going to take "extraordinary procedural tactics to block the nomination." Isn't that his job? If you're against something so important, and you're supposed to be the leader, if you don't attempt to get your followers to follow you, you're not leading!
I'm kind of bummed by the New York Times's move to make editorial content pay-only:It's a bold move for the Times, since the restrictions are certain to reduce the online exposure for those columnists, whose articles are routinely among the most e-mailed items on the Times' Web site. The Times could also see a decline in traffic to its site after bloggers can no longer link to articles by the columnists.
Exactly! Which is why BusinessWeek is skeptical about the matter.
In what might be a much better idea, Google is buying up fiber optic cable with the aim of creating a free worldwide wireless network. Why do I like this? For one thing, anything that can lessen the cost of information infrastructure to both consumers and businesses can only be good. Second, Google is likely acquiring the cable at dirt-cheap prices, as fiber-optics were really overbuilt in the '90s and now 95% of it is "dark" (unused). Third, setting up Wi-Fi over a large area is not all that expensive -- a company offered to do it for the city of Schenectady, NY for $1,000,000 (a deal which the city unwisely turned down). Fourth, it creates a HUGE new market for Google, which has several new bandwidth-hungry applications to unveil.
Ever wanted to talk to God? Now's your chance!
Albany, NY -- Kivun Conference
Went the longest time I've gone to date without a post. It's not my fault, though -- I couldn't get through to FTP via the hotel's connection. Damn you, Westin!!!
I attended a young Jewish professionals' conference the last two days in DC. The Charles & Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation sponsored the conference, called Kivun (meaning "direction" in Hebrew). The aim of the conference, as far as I can tell, was to provide a forum for Jewish communal workers in their 20s to speak their minds and avail their ideas to the Foundation. I guess it did that, but to what end?
I missed a good chunk of the conference due to work commitments, but from the parts in which I participated, Andy Bachman, the facilitator, the director of Brooklyn Jews, was the real highlight. He's an extremely charismatic and intelligent guy, and was very thought-provoking.
The problem with the conference was that, like the other conferences of this type I've attended in the past, as a friend of mine puts it, "mental masturbation." We're all uppity 20-somethings feeling so important for being invited in the first place, trying to impress each other, all saying the "right things," talking about the ways in which we can save the Jewish world. Well, I'm much more concerned with removing the barriers to doing my own job! Additionally, it's a bit silly to group all Jewish professionals together. When you do so, you imply that there's a specific skill set to the Jewish world that may or may not apply in other jobs. Well, I regard myself as a project manager with a technology and marketing background who happens to work in the Jewish world. The skills I have are easily transferrable. Don't pigeonhole me -- it's not good for my career.
I flew in and out of Logan Airport to Reagan (shiver...). Boston has instituted a parking system called Exit Express. I've seen similar systems, but what's interesting, and a bit creepy, about this one is that after you pay your fee, the cashier machine tells you where your car is. The parking lot attendant said that they do it by sending people around to inventory the cars each night, but that still doesn't explain how they assign each car to each ticket. I assume there's a camera that takes photos of the license plates when the car enters, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know?
At last... He-Man finally comes out of the closet.
